Results for: gerson

Confessions of a Quack: Holistic Harry Tells the Inside Story of Alternative Medicine

Confessions of a Quack is fiction, but it provides real insights into the thinking processes and motivations of quacks, alternative medicine providers, and their patients.

/ May 23, 2017

“Detox”: Ritual purification masquerading as medicine and wellness

If the "central dogma" of alternative medicine is that wishing makes it so, one of the most important of the other organizing dogmas of alternative medicine is that "toxins," whether they come from inside or outside, are making us sick and that we can't be healthy until we "detoxify." This is far more a religious belief than a science-based one.

/ January 30, 2017

Reviewing Andrew Wakefield’s VAXXED: Antivaccine propaganda at its most pernicious

Antivaccine "hero" Andrew Wakefield has recruited Del Bigtree to help him make a movie about the "CDC whistleblower" manufactroversy and anti vaccine conspiracy theories in general. The results are so ham-fisted that they would make Leni Riefenstahl shout, "Zu viel!" ("Too much!")

/ July 11, 2016

The Harm of Integrative Medicine: A Patient’s Perspective

I was diagnosed with cancer and entered treatment, at which point I directly experienced both excellent scientific care, and also the utter nonsense that is alternative medicine, rebranded as integrative medicine. Here are my reflections on the experience.

/ June 12, 2016

This Book Won’t Cure Your Cancer, But It Will Help You Think More Clearly About It

Gideon Burrows has an inoperable brain cancer that is slow growing but is inevitably going to kill him. He has written a remarkable book about his experience, This Book Won’t Cure Your Cancer. A professional wordsmith, he is able to describe his experience of illness so vividly that the reader enters into his life, feels what he feels, and shares his suspense...

/ November 10, 2015

Nevada’s new quack protection law

Practicing a licensed health care profession, such as medicine, without a license used to be a felony in Nevada. Not any more. As of July 1, quacks and charlatans are free to ply their trades unencumbered by the threat that they might have to answer to the regulatory authorities for their misdeeds, as long as they follow a few simple rules. This...

/ July 9, 2015

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food? The obsessive worship of “medicinal foods”

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. – attributed to Hippocrates Who said anything about medicine? Let’s eat! – attributed to one of Hippocrates forgotten (and skeptical) students   Who hasn’t seen or heard Hippocrates’ famous quote about letting food be your medicine and your medicine your food? If you have Facebook friends who are the least bit into...

/ June 1, 2015

“Quackery: A $10 Billion Scandal”

Who would you guess authored a 250-page report which begins with this Preface? This report marks the culmination of an intensive four-year review of quackery and its impact on the elderly. . . As this report details, quackery has traveled far from the day of the pitchman and covered wagon to emerge as big business. Those who orchestrate and profit from the...

/ October 30, 2014

Yahoo News spews NaturalNews anti-vaccine (and other) propaganda

Yahoo News appears to have confused NaturalNews with actual news. It’s not. NaturalNews is the in-house propaganda organ for Mike Adams, whom I’ll introduce in a minute (although he needs no introduction for most readers here). A couple of recent examples:     A recycled story, over a year old, from NaturalNews, appearing on Yahoo News last week. It starts out as...

/ October 2, 2014